Quantities in Chilli Jam

Asked by Khadine. Answered on 20th September 2015

Full question

Hi, I want to make the Chilli Jam but your recipe states 150gm of chillies which is a awful lot of chillies along with 150gm sugar. Why so many? Most recipes say only 4-6 chilles. Also I live in Spain and can't buy either jam sugar or pectin powder, but I can buy pectin liquid. Will this work? Many thanks Gail.

Our answer

Nigella's Chilli Jam recipe (from Christmas and on the Nigella website) uses 150g long red chilli peppers. These are sometimes known as Dutch chillies and are a low to medium heat chilli (2,500 to 8,000 Scoville heat units). 150g is about 8 chillies so the quantity is not excessively large. The bright red colour of the jam is bolstered by 150g of red (bell/sweet) peppers, but these do not add any heat.

The amount of sugar used is 1kg, along with 600ml cider vinegar, so the quantities of sweet and hot peppers do not seem to be that large as a proportion of the other ingredients and the flecks of peppers can be seen in suspended in the jam, rather than being a thick mass. It is possible to use liquid pectin rather than jam sugar or powdered pectin, but please follow the instructions on the packaging in terms of quantity and use and bear in mind that there is no pectin at all in the jam ingredients themselves.